Voices of Wrestling 2024 Match of the Year: #9 (CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre)

CM Punk and Drew McIntyre conclude their rivalry in a Hell in a Cell match, the #9 match for Voices of Wrestling’s 2024 Match of the Year!

VOICES OF WRESTLING 2024 MATCH OF THE YEAR ARCHIVES

• Introduction, Voters & Honorable Mentions
• Matches #100-76
• Matches #75-51
• Matches #50-26
• Matches #25-11
• Match of the Year Statistical Analysis & Top 10 Early Reveal (FlagshipPatreon.com)
• Match #10: Hangman Page vs. Swerve Strickland
• Match #9: CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre

VOICES OF WRESTLING MATCH OF THE YEAR ARCHIVES

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014
• 2013
• 2012

#9
CM Punk defeats Drew McIntyre
10/05
WWE

Overall Points: 231
Total Votes: 45
Percentage of Ballots: 22.17%
1 First-Place Vote

“Drew McIntyre had a massive 2024, and this match perfectly encapsulated why. McIntyre really shines when he can force his opponent to come into McIntyre’s comfort zone and brawl it out. You could genuinely feel the hatred oozing from these two. The only thing I would have changed was the outcome.” – Kiley Fuller

“The best singles men’s Cell match in decades, blood and hate and violence” – William Young

“Leave it up to these two goofballs to have an intense, bloody finale to an awkward storyline. This opener didn’t leave any room for anyone on the card to follow up on its intensity. Finally, the Hell in a Cell stipulation is justified, stamped in its steel wires. Funny how that works: a match type with a sullied reputation replenished by the hate festering in a lame storyline. ” – Corey Michaels

“Punk’s latest WWE run has never felt right to me, but this did and showed that this isn’t the VKM era. HIAC matches should be bloody and violent and this certainly was. It was a perfect end to my feud of the year.” – Josh Nason

“Having been very vocal that I don’t watch WWE anymore, I think it speaks a lot to how good this match is that it’s the only WWE match on here. I love Drew a lot, and Punk even moreso. Last year, I said that Punk was part of a dying breed of wrestlers, and that once again rings true here. It returns to what the Hell in the Cell match was built for (and I guess not because they oversaturated the cage match so much they had to make an even bigger one in the first place?) – two people actually stuck inside the structure wanting to beat each other up as much as possible. The bracelet lore thing is really dumb to me, but it found its place in this match quite well and I commend that a lot. I hope this shows that Punk isn’t washed; he’s still great, just a grizzled veteran now proving he still belongs, and on another level to everyone else.” – James Carlin

“Best in-ring WWE match by far this year. Months of build made everything about this match hit that much harder. It was the perfect culmination in the year long feud between Drew and Punk.” – Jon Rogers

“A brutal and violent feud ending match! Both men come out swinging with Drew having the obvious size and power advantage while Punk is quicker and more experienced. Doesn’t take long for the match to spill to the floor with both using the cage and any weapons they can get their hands on to attack the other like Punk choking Drew with a leg of a table. Great little touch. Drew takes over with a Claymore out of nowhere and gets some heat on Punk, including busting him open. Punk rolls out the ring to avoid another Claymore and bashes Drew’s head with a toolbox when Drew chases after him. Drew is pouring blood now! Jesus! GTS by Punk but Drew falls out the ring. Great way to protect their finishers. Drew goes for a Claymore, only for Punk to back up which causes Drew to miss and Punk locks the Sharpshooter on him. Drew fights out by hitting Punk with a wrench! YES! More big spots with a suplex off the apron and through a table and an Air Raid Crash on the steel steps. Punk gets Drew in the Anaconda Vice and this time when Drew tries to use the wrench to break the hold, Punk uses the wrench to choke Drew more and hits him with it. This is great! Punk goes for Drew’s head but Drew low blows him! Drew pours a bag of beads over Punk to toy with him. Another Claymore but Punk moves and Drew lands back first on the steps! MY GOD! Punk fills Drew’s mouth with beads and hits a GTS with a chain wrapped around his knee to end it! WOW! This was a near perfect match! The hatred was felt in every second of the match and some great usage of the Cell as well as the weapons around the ring. This was bloody, violent, brutal and just awesome! My kind of pro wrestling!” – Alex Kalil

“Everything you’d want out of the finale to an epic Punk vs. McIntyre feud. These are the style of matches Punk excels in at this point in his career. ” – Greg Parks

“Best Hell in a Cell match in a long time that actually meant something and was a great culmination of a long term story.” – Mike Charlip

“I don’t like current-day WWE, I think it has one of the worst house-styles ever, so it really takes something special to transcend that enough for me to consider something for a list like this. This is the only one in the last few years that succeeded. This felt brutal and scary in way HIAC ought to be but rarely is. The moment where Drew McIntyre misses the kick and ruins his spine made me shout out loud.” – Kadaveri

“I thought this was a simple throwback to what a violent feud should ” – Jeff Schwartz

“I think Punk’s whole purpose of this match was to prove that he can work a dangerous match and survive. And while Drew certainly took the bigger and more nastier bumps of the match, Punk had his fair share. Ultimately, I think this was able to capture the tension and violence necessary for the stipulation to work. Not only through the weapon usage, but through the basic means such as punching and body language. WWE’s prone to dramatics and melodrama, to which this possesses also, but this manages to toe the line enough not to overshadow what it set out to achieve. The pacing was excellent most of all too. Thirty one minutes can be an ice age under the wrong hands, and this was anything but. I think these two just knocked it out of the park. Nothing else to it. ” – MC

“In a year without the craziness of Roman/Cody, this is my match of the year. It was everything we wanted and needed from a Cell Match. It properly ended a hate filled rivalry that lasted nearly a year. Just a brutal, bloody classic to end what was the Feud of The Year! ” – Robert S Leighty Jr

“It’s only natural that one of WWE’s most personal and nasty feuds in recent memory needed to come to an end inside Hell In A Cell. To the credit of Punk, Drew, and to WWE, in general, what we got here was a real old school Cell match, complete with lots of blood and violence. No matter your stance on blood and violence in wrestling, it didn’t make sense to have HIAC bouts in a TV-PG world, where it devolved into damn near a regular wrestling match inside of a cage. This was the perfect amount of physicality for the feud that played out before it.” – Aaron Hyden aka Hustle

“Probably the best WWE gimmick match of all time (I can’t think of much better?)” – Michael Kilby

“A fitting end to a blood feud. WWE has realized that there’s money in heightened violence when the stakes call for it, and are finally aiming to strike a happy medium between the company’s hyper-violent heyday and completely sterilized modern presentation. The carnage that unfolded here felt particularly effective, and justified, given its overall rarity. Punk and McIntyre’s feud had, perhaps, crossed its best-by date a little while ago, and the final chapter unquestionably needed this level of physicality and it delivered in a big way. Punk and Drew had the crowd eating out of the palm of their hands from the get-go, they hit all the right story beats and call backs and delivered one of the best WWE matches of the year. After a relatively mundane and disappointing match at SummerSlam, these two have more than redeemed themselves with two back-to-back memorable brawls.” – Brandon LeClair

“I’ve waited so long for this CM Punk. Hell in a Cell finally means something, it’s violent once more. Drew McIntyre and CM Punk have disappointed me in their first two matches but it wasn’t their fault. Seth being in the first match ruined it for me and the four corner strap match rather than the strap being more of a weapon killed my interest for their match. But finally, these two wrestled to the potential that I knew they could. And the blood, the glorious blood. Whether it’s a blade or a toolbox straight to the dome, the visual of the blood pouring down these warriors’ heads adds on to the danger of this cell match. This didn’t feel like a regular WWE match and that’s the best part about it. This felt like a fight. This was personal. It’s more than a bracelet, it’s more than pride. It’s business to CM Punk. And he took care of it.” – Nathan Heslip

“Well they finally had a match worthy of the great build with no WWE-isms getting in the way of things. In fact they had the best WWE match all year, not that it’s a particularly high bar in 2024. When Drew goes out of the ring to fetch a table a few minutes into the match I thought great, here we are again with baby’s first hardcore match – how long til the kendo sticks come out? Then Drew rips the table leg off to use as a weapon and then I was hooked. You think you’ve seen every possible table spot ever in wrestling, and these guys came up with about 3 new ones just in this match. I loved Punk throwing Drew back onto the folded table legs – it’s not a flashy spot, but you know that hurts more than just falling onto the canvas and it all tied into Drew’s back issues in the match. I think this might be the best performance of Drew’s career. I was so convinced his back was fucked when he struggled to get the stairs into the ring. The blood obviously raises the bar here. It’s so rare to see a bloodbath in WWE, but if ever there was a time to ease up on that rule, it was here. Drew’s was brutal, and I loved him waving off the towel everytime the ref tried to clean him up. I thought Punk was great as the babyface taking his beating and surviving long enough to wait for an opportunity and then throwing everything at it e.g. the trio of corner knees or the trio of toolbox hits. I didn’t need the reminder of the friendship bracelet when the plastic beads made an appearance at the end, but it didn’t spoil things for me and still played into the theme of the match with Drew landing back first onto the steps” – Ed Mills

“Punk and McIntyre was, even though injuries and missed timing, was one of the best things going in WWE. For my money, though, this was my favorite match of the trilogy.” – Ryan Ciocco

“When a gimmick match has had over 50 iterations going back to the 90s, how do you innovate? This is how. Drew and Punk breathed fresh life into the Hell in a Cell match, and this brutal yet beautiful rendition ranks among the best in it’s history.” – Slyguy46

“This match succeeds because of how different it feels in the WWE environment. There’s something to be said for how a bucket of blood can completely elevate a match. When you dump that bucket into an environment that for the past 15+ years has felt incredibly sterile, it goes from simply elevating to creating shock and awe. Punk and McIntyre produced a gritty, violent, hate-filled, blood-soaked, good old fashioned grudge match that would have been plentiful in the territories in 1984 but seems completely unheard of in the WWE in 2024. I’m frankly shocked this match even happened and might be the first sign that the times are indeed changing and that the AEW influence is real. This match goes against every WWE plunder brawl in as long as I can remember by feeling authentic and real as opposed to contrived and overproduced and simply existing to get a viral moment or “this is awesome” chant. An argument could be made against the spot with the beads at the end but I thought it worked in the grand scheme of their story. Maybe in 5 years, if we get matches like this in the WWE with more consistency it feels less special, but as it stands right now it is an anomaly. If that happens though, this match should be celebrated as the start of the change. ” – Travis McNeill

“Punk and McIntyre finally had their big blowoff inside Hell in a Cell after spending most of 2024 going at each other’s throats. Many HIAC matches are good but end up being unremarkable because they all end up being the same plunder match where everyone works hard, but nothing truly stands out. But this was different, as for the first time in ages WWE allowed BLOOD in a match. And boy, did they bleed. It turned a weapons match into something far more special, and the sound psychology made this one of the better matches of the year.” – Bryan Rose

“The match that brought back the Hell in a Cell as a legitimate feud-ender. Punk and McIntyre had had bad blood (if you’ll pardon the pun) all year, and this was the perfect culmination to it all. Still think WWE is a PG product? Watch this! Bloody, gruesome, wince-inducing (the Claymore spot into the steel steps still makes me grimace), these guys laid it all out there. You know it’s a smart piece of business when both men come out of it looking better than ever, and that’s especially true for McIntyre despite coming up short. ” – Theo Sambus

“The blowoff to the Punk/Drew feud at BAD BLOOD 2024 at a Hell in a Cell Match was the cap off to one of the most stunning returns in WWE history with Punk showing up at SURVIVOR SERIES 2023 to the dismay of many talents in WWE. As Punk made his return at ROYAL RUMBLE for competition, he tore his triceps from a move by Drew McIntyre. Summarily out of action for months, Punk and Drew went back and forth on the microphone in increasingly heated segments until Wrestlemania when Punk cost Drew his title after beating Seth Rollins. As the blood feud continued, by the time we got to October the fans and WWE knew this was coming to an end. What we didn’t know was how committed Punk and Drew were to deliver a satisfying conclusion to a near year long feud. This is how it’s done and should be studied moving forward.” – Jeremy Finestone

Voices of Wrestling 2024 Match of the Year
(305-11)